Owen replied:
Who told you that?
My oncologist.
What kind?
I hesitated.
Part of me wanted to shut the laptop.
Part of me wanted to tell him to go to hell.
Instead, I wrote:
Stage four ovarian cancer. Rare spread pattern. They said treatment might buy time, not cure.
There was no reply for three minutes.
Then:
I’m sorry.
I almost laughed.
Sorry.
The smallest word in the world.
Then another message appeared.
My sister was told something similar. She got a second opinion too late. I won’t pretend miracles happen because people want them. But I also won’t participate in giving up too early.
I pressed my fist to my mouth.
His sister.
There it was.
His condition had a ghost behind it.
I wrote:
And if the second doctor says the same thing?
Then I will stand beside you at your wedding. No money. No questions. No pity.
I read that line three times.
No pity.
That was the first thing anyone had said to me since the diagnosis that did not make me feel like I was already lying in a coffin.
Everyone else had softened.
My mother touched my hair like I was five.
My father stopped using the word “future.”
Friends texted heart emojis and prayer hands and said, “You’re so strong,” as if strength were something dying women automatically received in the mail.
Caleb, the man I was supposed to marry, had cried while packing his bag.
“I can’t watch you disappear,” he whispered.
I had wanted to scream, Then close your eyes, coward.
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